


Collisions

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [604]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 10:02:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19060411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: Anonymous askedFic Request Alan Racing and Crashing, Scott and Virgil being called out as IR to help with the accident and having to free alan - lila





	1. Chapter 1

He kept telling himself it was practice. The racing pods were all souped up beyond any reasonable spec, matched except for the colour scheme. This was a race of driver skill, not mechanical ingenuity after all.

Beyond that, though, any goes–any dirty trick, from cutting off to directly body-slamming the competition right off the road.  To succeed required nerves of steel and reflexes of light.

Good practice for his day job.

Alan’s won four out of the last five, with five races still to go in this comp, and he can feel the other drivers sizing him up as the one to beat.  They’re somewhere north of Fukushima for this round, the wastelands still legally devoid of people even after all these years.  

His brothers think he’s in Seoul for a gamer meeting, a nice safe hobby in a room full of fellow nerds.

Alan feels safe in the pod of his racer, despite the full moon and the sloping, curving track before him.  He counts then dismisses the hovering drones that represent spectators–they’re a thousand miles away, somewhere lux and plush and with champagne. The racers are the only humans out here now.

The official drone starts flashing red, and Alan glances over his dash one last time, already sinking into that reflexive place of speed inside his soul as the red turns to amber, then, finally, to green.

Anything goes in this race.  Including alliances.

They close in on all sides, a blue pod cutting him off and immediately slowing down, forcing Alan’s speed down instinctively.  Before he could veer, a yellow and a green pod appeared, port and starboard, closing in a pincer movement. A glance told Alan a silver pod had closed off a backwards escape. In the space of an inhale, the other pods flowed out from the red flanks of his pod, and  _slammed_  back into him, full acceleration, full force.  Despite his helmet and harness, Alan feels muscles scream and bones crack as he’s slammed like a pea in a very hard drum as they bounce him between their fenders until something finally gives and he’s rolling.

He comes to, upside-down, pod windows cracked and oozing mud, the hum of the other pods already fading down the mountain.

His arm is broken, possibly also the collar bone. He feels woozy, but there’s only one set of dials in front of him, so he hopes that means no concussion. But he can taste blood on the back of his teeth, and its hard to breathe through the aching in his face.  His leg is pinned, and by the dim cabin emergency light, he can see something metal sticking out of his thigh.  Everything below the knee, he can’t tell past the collapsed steering column.

In short, not good. Even so, he still weighs up the options–a metal shard embedded in his thigh was  _almost_ on par with suffering Scott’s wrath.

It’s the creaking noise his pod makes as it settles deeper into the mud of the spring thaw that finally tips the balance.  Even with two working arms and two working legs, there’s nowhere for him to escape too.

His communicator is in a special anti-signal pouch in a special little hatch in the dash–he didn’t trust leaving it at the driver’s tent.  He manages to free it, almost sobbing as he has to cross his good arm over his bad to reach for it.

“International rescue? I have a bit of a situation.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:
> 
> Omg please continue the Fic with Alans Crash! (Not RBD the one where IR are active) i need to know how the brothers react 😅 if course only if you have time (love your fics)

Scott’s exhausted, but he’s still got his reports to finish.  He’d been stood down from flight with minutes left on his flight clock, and even after a hot meal and a hotter shower, he can still feel the pull of the harness around his shoulders, the weight of his helmet on his neck.

But he’s been stood down, formally and officially and according to the rules, so he may as well pour himself a single finger of scotch from the bottle in the desk drawer, lets his head roll to try to banish the kinks and knots.

It’s late on the island, and quiet now the rumble of One’s return has faded.  Grandma had kissed his head when he’d come in, gripping his sash to bring him down to her level, before shuffling off to bed.  John’s high above, almost probably going to bed as promised after guiding Scott home.  Alan’s out taking some well-earned R&R with his nerd friends.  Only Virgil and Gordon are a possible concern; Scott had got home before his clock ran out, but Two wasn’t quite fast enough.

They were close enough to London however to touch down into warm welcome of the Manor.  Scott swirls the scotch around his glass with a small, wistful smile.  He doubts he’d be getting much complaint from those two for having to doss down there.

A message pops up in the corner of Scott’s tab, little status updates from Brains, or perhaps more accurately, MAX.  One was refuelling, and the downtime was being used, as always, to tinker and repair and replace.  A fuel filter this time.

Scott takes a sip, relaxed.  One is his Bird but she’s Brains’ baby, and there’s no-one else he’d trust to take care of her. 

The last of the booze burns  beautifully as it slides over his throat, already kicking in as he stands. He’s become a bit of a lightweight.  He laughs as he grips the side of the table, rolls and arches his shoulders in one last desperate, futile attempt to get his shoulders to unknot.

Scott is halfway to the door when the holocomm chimes.  There are no witnesses, so technically Scott could deny the words that slipped out of his mouth.  “Ugh. Fine,” Scott grumbles, retracing his steps to stand in front of the bottle and glass left on the table. “Connect.”

The house computers automatically adjusted the light as always, even if all it resolved was the IR logo.  

“International rescue?” It takes Scott too long to recognize Alan’s voice, too tight with pain and too young with fear. “I have a bit of a situation.” 

Scott has to reach back to grab the bench to steady himself as his heart rate leaps, like it does whenever he hears that off note in a brother’s voice.  The glass clinks against the bottle and reminds him of his own situation.

“EOS, wake up John.”

“I’m here,” and John doesn’t sound like he’s been to bed at all, still just as tired, his voice rubbed raw after a day of promising help and succour. “Alan?”

“Guys,” Alan is fighting for control, but now he’s focused and awake and listening, Scott can hear a laundry list of bad noises.  “Don’t be mad.  But I might have done something stupid.”

“Hold tight Allie.  I’m coming for you.”

“Scott!”

“Don’t you dare quote flight regs at me-”

“How about this status update that tells me that One’s fuel filter assembly is currently on the floor of the maintenance hangar.”

This time Scott didn’t care who heard what he said. 

Alan’s chuckle on the light turns into a hiss of pain. “Welp,” he says tightly, and Scott hates Alan’s feeble attempts to hide the hurt, that he felt he had to hide it at all. “That’s inconvenient.”

The transmission data has appeared beside the logo, John or EOS or whoever, Scott didn’t care.  “Wait, Japan? Not Kore–whatever.”  Tracy-One could get there in six hours, five if  he pushed it.  “What are you doing in Japan?”

“Did you promise-”

“Alan!” He and John speak in stereo, a wall of elder-brother noise that always brought their younger siblings back into line.

“Pod racing.” It’s said at barely a whisper, a wince more than a word.  “And I may have, kinda, sorta, um,  _crashed_.”

“Excuse me?”

“Pod racing.” John repeats briskly, and Scott can picture him hovering in his sphere, pulling the facts together like it was just another mission.  “And crashed. I have a location.  Mountainous terrain.  Nearest runway is twenty miles from your location.  Scott, you can’t get there in anything less than…six hour forty minutes.”

“Have you got a better idea?”

The holocomm lit up, a thousand separate signals, a constantly twirling globe of life and pain and need that always made Scott’s head spin.  “Yeah.  You take over comms.  I can drop and be there in twenty.”

“Drop?  From orbit?”

“Got a better idea?”  John’s voice is tight; pulse already racing, breath already tight as he moves through suit up as fast as he could. “Already moving Five into position over Japan. I’ll drop with the space elevator and cut our  _idiot_  little brother out of his wreck. We can then climb up to the road. Maybe call us a cab?” 

John’s humour wasn’t for everyone, but it made Scott smile nonetheless.  “International Rescue arriving by taxi might dent our rep.”

“Um, guys?” Alan’s voice was breathy.  “Could it maybe be an ambulance.”

Scott felt his stomach drop and roil.  “Alan?  What aren’t you telling us?”

“I may have a broken leg.  And a broken arm. And some other things.  Hard to tell without suit telemetry.”

Scott could count on one hand the number of times he’s heard John swear before now.  In an impressive five second burst he doubles his count.  “The elevator has a full med kit,” he adds, his professionalism welding back in over the course of seven snapped words.

“Drop  _now,_ Thunderbird Five,” Scott orders, taking the steps in a single drop to spin the glowing globe around to the pulsing red dot that was their baby brother. “I’ll find you help when you get there.  Just  _get there_.”

“John?” And now he’s listening for it, Scott hears shock and fear in Alan’s voice. “Hurry?”

“Hurrying” John confirms, and his comm snaps off.

Scott reaches up, touching the dot, feeling his muscles clench in a desperate need to  _move_ , to  _act,_  to do anything but stand here and  _watch_. But John was the closest, so he needed to do what John would do. He swallowed hard, trying to remember John’s tone, the calm soothing cadence they’d all heard a thousand times before.  “We’re coming for you Ally.  Hang on.”

Five appeared in the holo, silvery and cool.  A tiny line spooled out and started to drop, as fast as Scott had ever seen it move.

“Just hang on.”


End file.
